A quiet morning smoke break on Hennepin Avenue. I was watching the Ken Burns’ three-part series on Prohibition last night and learned the origin of the term ‘Skid Row‘; it comes from Skid Road in Vancouver or Seattle where the loggers would ‘skid’ the logs from the docks to the lumber mills. It was home to hard-working and hard-drinking workmen. It eventually became the term for the rough vice-riddled neighborhoods in big cities like Minneapolis. Eventually the city planners in the 60′s demolished our skid row and put in the cold boring buildings all along the area north of Washington at Hennepin. They destroyed a lot of really interesting buildings as well including the Metropolitan Building. This photo is of The Gay 90′s, which was on the edge of the area and managed to survive the do-gooders and their wrecking ball.

Every photographer in Minneapolis has to have this shot. If you go looking, you’ll figure out where to stand, in fact, it’s delightfully obvious. The first time I went looking and found the location, it was like finding a geocache or and Easter egg.

When I was out in the storm with Snapshutter, we stopped to get out of the snow under at this little market. All the different lights caught my eye. It reminded me a little of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Oh yes, that’s the famed Snapshutter on the phone in the corner.

The storm that came through here was the 5th biggest storm snowfall in history at 17.2 inches, and the biggest one since the infamous Halloween snowfall of 1992. It stopped snowing Saturday night and I headed down to Lake and Hennepin with my friends Tom & Ashley. Not many places were open, but ones that were were packed. The piles were pretty big, but nobody had really shoveled yet. I’m itching to get out today and see what I can see. Maybe I can venture downtown and check out the Metrodome roof collapse.